


Lonely But Not Alone

by LaughingLynx



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Friendship, Heaven, Hell, Loneliness, Post Fall, Post-Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-11
Updated: 2019-04-11
Packaged: 2020-01-11 03:09:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18421587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaughingLynx/pseuds/LaughingLynx
Summary: Lucifer has always been around other people, always surrounded. But now, perhaps, he is not as lonely as he has been.





	Lonely But Not Alone

**Author's Note:**

> So, first Lucifer fic! I was really hesitant to post this, actually, since it didn't feel quite right to me, but after asking some advice and taking a step back from it for a few days (plus the announcement of the release date), I ended up liking it a lot better than I had when I was writing it, so here it is! This is beta-ed by me, so if there are any errors (especially in tense) I'm sorry!
> 
> I'd love any constructive criticism anyone has to offer!

Samael had never been alone. He had always had his brothers and sisters, older and younger, after all, and later, he had his stars, _his_ creations, whatever his Father might have said they were. But he did not know a time when he was not lonely.

For a long time, he was not so different from any of his siblings. He loved their Father, worshiped Him, with the same unwavering faith that they all shared at that point. He was the youngest child, and undoubtedly the one who shone the brightest in the eyes of their parents, at least before everything went wrong. Samael could bring that light that his Father had fallen in love with when his parents first met, had inherited that from his mother, and so he was the favorite, fawned over, given the task to spread that light. But with that mission came jealousy from his siblings, and so he found himself surrounded by people who looked at him as a rival instead of as someone to have affection for.

When his father started on humanity, it shifted the focus away, but Samael did not mind. He had his stars, and now, he had a little sister. A darker angel than most, Azrael was sweet, and kind, and giggled when he made little stars in his hands, unlike most of his siblings, who had seen it enough to no longer care.

For centuries, as his parents fought, shaking the Silver City with their rage, Samael played with Rae, taught her how to fly, how to pull up just in time to only graze the top of Amenadiel’s head, how to dart away from their oldest brother’s anger at the prank. But she was a child, however intelligent she may have been, and as much as he never would admit it out loud, he yearned for a friend. Someone just to talk to, to share things, tell stories.

And then the first two humans were sent out into the garden his Father had made to keep them safe. There had been some failed test runs of these strange creatures, of course, but these two seemed to have earned his Father’s approval. Samael was curious, and despite the warning his Father had given them to not interfere, he flew down to Earth, just to sneak a peek at the two newest beings.

It was a while before he saw anything through the greenery. Tucking his wings carefully against his back, he walked through the garden, quietly marveling at the green that was all around him. Even if the fighting had torn their family apart, his Father had created something quite lovely, though compared to Heaven, it was nothing. Or at least that was what he thought, until he stumbled across the humans.

He could see why his Father was so proud of these creatures. The one he saw first was slender, dark skin and hair warm in contrast to the green all around them. Something about the human was enchanting, and Samael moved forward, asked for a name. The man – for this one was Adam, as he introduced himself – was wary of the armored angel, but he was curious, and was not afraid for long. Eve was faster to trust, asked questions, and again Samael is not alone.

When he offered them the fruit, it was not to go against his Father. Rather, it was to see this free will that he did not yet understand in action, for none of his brothers or sisters had it. Again more curious and less nervous, Eve took it first, and the sun caught on the juice that dribbled down her chin. Without thinking, Samael reaches forward and brushes it away, licking it off his finger, and something he had not yet seen in the humans came forth, feral and strange and warm.

For a while, he thought that perhaps those few hours were the first time he had not been lonely, and it was only much, much later that he acknowledged that while the three rejoiced in each other, in the creation that God had given them, the two humans were not his peers. They were fragile, brief flashes of life, and they saw him as a curiosity, but not truly a companion. And so Samael went back to Heaven.

Of course, his Father was furious when He discovered what had happened, and Samael, distant from his brothers and already beginning to doubt his Father’s plan, fought back. _Why_ , he demanded, _are they allowed choice? Why are they more deserving of that than us?_ He does not ask why they are better than him, why his Father ignores his children and wife in favor of these creatures, even as the child who grew up with warring parents cries out for forgiveness, kindness. But his spoken questions do enough damage. No one had seen God so angry as He was that day, and Samael knew his siblings prayed they never would again. Azrael did try to step in, and perhaps that was why she was later sent to be the angel of death, another exile, in many ways, from Heaven.

He was held down while Michael broke his wings, and he wasn’t sure if that betrayal or the broken limbs hurt more. The bones snapped with a sickening finality, and Samael screamed until his voice was ruined, breath rasping in a burning throat. It saved him from screaming when he was tossed, unable to stop his fall, from the Silver City. The darkness between dimensions wrapped around him quickly, and it was suffocating. As the light bringer, pure darkness was unimaginable, and he lost track of how long he fell in his panic. It may have been years, or months, or even just a few minutes, but to him, it felt like eternity, caught in a spiral of shattered wings and sickening rage for his Father and the rejection from his family that was a long time coming, bubbling up in his throat like acid.

*

The Devil had always been lonely, but never alone. When he landed, the force of it cracked the ground of whatever realm this was, the divine energy that had made Samael what he was flaring out into fire that turned the landscape to ash. There were other beings there -- he could hear their shrieks of pain as the fires burn them, too. He was too tired to scream, though, as it burned the feathers from his wings, the skin from his flesh. The pain was ever present, of course, but it would all heal, he knew, and so he did not move, even when a strange, bedraggled creature approached him, ducking between the flames.

The demon, as he later learned she was, looked like Eve, and so he decided, at the time, that she was probably female. The skin where the fire had touched was smooth and dark, and almost all of it was burned in this strange fashion, all except for half of her face, which had remained untouched, gruesome but how it perhaps should have been. It was not that his fire healed her, but rather, that it forced her into something else, and that, he later decides, was perhaps worse.

She grabbed him, dragging him out of the center of the flames. The Devil later learns that she did so because a fallen angel could fetch her a good price, among her people, but not if it was dead, and even if the reasons were selfish, he thanked her for her help. She did not nurse him back to health -- it was not in her nature. But she did help him set the broken bones in his wings, after he mentioned, strategically, that he would be worth more undamaged, and let him heal. When she asked his name, he could not speak it, the word boiled in his rage at his Father until he could no longer recognize it as his own. She was Mazikeen, though, and she was not a friend, but an ally, and it was she who came up with the title of ‘Devil’.

This time, when that same heat he had seen with the humans comes up between them, it was less of a dance and more of a fight. They were not matched in strength, but she was determined to get what she wanted, and he did not surrender control easily. So they fought, and they came to an agreement. She would help him gain standing and safety in this new realm, Hell, as she called it, and he would make sure she joined him in that rise to power.

Time moves strangely there, and he did not know how long it takes for the plan to come to fruition. Many demons had died by the time the Devil claimed his throne, their blood spilled on the hill where he had staged the battle, and when he turned to face those who had surrendered, his skin shifted into that grotesque, flayed creature that will later terrorize those human souls that deserve it, eyes flashing red, and Mazikeen next to him grinned.

When the first human arrived in Hell, it came as a surprise. For what felt like centuries, there had been nothing to do, and so the Devil languished on his throne, his anger always simmering just beneath the surface, the loneliness pushed even further down. Abel was battered when he came to stand before the throne, and the Devil sat up finally, eyes flashing into red as he stares at the young man, listens to his story.i

He may have had no way to strike back at his Father for the Fall, but the Devil now had a gift-wrapped opportunity to at least strike at the creatures that were so praised by God. And so he did, turning to Mazikeen to do the job for him. The other demons were good, but she was loyal and ruthless, and delighted in the opportunity to make sure Abel regretted everything he ever did.

The humans kept coming, slowly at first, and then in a growing trickle, and again, the Devil was surrounded, either by them or by the demons who clambered for his approval or clawed at his power. But even Mazikeen was not a friend, not someone he could truly talk to. She was carnal, a coil of dark energy with a self-interest that impressed him to the point of respect, but it, at the same time, drove him away, and of course, the humans were dead, and had little interest in talking to the Devil. So again, he was lonely.

Hell was his realm now. But Earth had always been special to him, and so he went back, just to see how the humans were doing. They were inventive, and moved quickly, something he could not help but admire about them. Their short lives meant that they could think of things immortals could never even dream of, and he, in some ways, admired them for that, though their relentless idea of him as a monster stoked the flames of his rage.

So he caught glimpses, surfacing every few centuries, only to be beaten and dragged back down to Hell by his oldest brother. Amenadiel held nothing but contempt for the Devil, and seemed to even take pleasure in causing his younger brother, who would likely never be a match to him in a fight, pain. Even so, the Devil kept going back to Earth, driven there by curiosity and a desire to be anywhere but his realm.

He did meet the so-called son of God, a man named Jesus, with whom the Devil fundamentally disagreed. But while he hated the depictions of God that this man spouted, some of the ideas beyond all of that are not entirely bad, and it was a shame when later humans twist those words into something entirely different from what they should be.

There were many humans who he met, learned about and from, but there was only one who he met who he mourns for when they came to Hell. A painter, lonely in many of the same ways the Devil was, who painted the stars so beautifully it made the former angel’s heart ache. Vincent was forever unhappy, but he was kind, even when it drove him further into insanity to learn who the stranger interested in his art was. The Devil had always been curious, and could not help but ask, as it was the first time he had met someone who saw the stars the way he did originally, and he spent as much time talking to Vincent as he could. Again, though, he was dragged down to Hell, expecting to never see the man again, and when Van Gogh drove himself there over guilt for failing, for being alive, the Devil could not help but feel sadness. The painter was not a friend, but he was the closest the Devil had ever had, and so he sent him to Purgatory instead of eternal torture, hoping to spare the man some pain.

Now, though, he is Lucifer, the light bringer, his stars swirling in his mind’s eye like the paintings of the dead human, and he has reclaimed that part of himself, rejected the role of adversary in favor of a celebration of the things he is most proud of. He will rise from the ashes of Samael, if only to prove to his father that he is not a toy to be thrown away when it is no longer useful, and he will forge himself into something new.

*

Lucifer made sure he was never alone, but he no longer understood the idea that that did not mean he wasn’t lonely. Linda asked about it once, why he surrounded himself with people he barely knew instead of friends, and he does not answer.

The truth was that he did not know how to be a friend, nor did he know how to make them. Humans and their desires were always easy for him to manipulate, but genuine compassion was beyond him. And when the first human he started to truly feel love for turned out to be just another gear in the machine that his Father had created, he raged, mourned, and left, distancing himself both to prevent his detective from harm, and to protect himself.

When she finds out who he is, he thinks it will ruin the tattered remains of the maybe friendship they have. It doesn’t, but only barely, and it makes him realize, for the first time, that if she, or any of the humans who know him now, were to hate him, it would crush him, because they are friends, in their own way, and he cannot bare to be without that again. Even if they are temporary, especially compared to the thousands and thousands of years he has been alive, he cares for them. For his detective, for Linda, even for the spawn and the douche, if he’s pressed to think about it.

He has always been around other people, always surrounded. But now, perhaps, he is not as lonely as he has been.


End file.
